The United States has given up a bid to ban uranium-enrichment technology sales to non-nuclear states, instead proposing criteria for such transactions to win over critics in the Nuclear Suppliers Group, diplomats say.
But Canada and possibly some others in the 45-nation NSG may not be satisfied with parts of the new approach, the diplomats, familiar with the matter but asking for anonymity due to political sensitivities, told Reuters.
Washington's shift was the subject of a two-day consultative NSG meeting that began in Vienna on Monday. A decision on the US move - which must be made by consensus - would be left to the group's next plenary session in Berlin on May 19-23. The NSG seeks to prevent nuclear proliferation by curbing transfers of technology of possible use in building atom bombs. But enriched uranium is also the basis of peaceful nuclear energy, for which demand in developing nations is rocketing.
Diplomats said leading world uranium producer Canada spearheaded pressure on Washington to relent on a full ban in enrichment-related sales, which has been renewed annually by G8 industrialised powers at US behest since 2004 amid mushrooming concern over Iran's secretive uranium enrichment campaign. "The United States was for years the only holdout in the NSG against sales criteria. This new language shows some US flexibility on criteria," said one Western diplomat.
At the Vienna meeting, diplomats said, US officials were to present a new "criteria-based approach", a stricter version of an earlier compromise proposal backed by most NSG states.
The new formula would proscribe sensitive nuclear transfers to states that have not joined the Non-Proliferation Treaty, do not permit intrusive, snap UN nuclear inspections and have not met International Atomic Energy Agency safeguards commitments. They would also require that any equipment sold be immune to duplication - so-called "black box technology" operated only by supplier personnel in the recipient state to minimise risk of diversions to military ends.
CANADIAN CONCERNS: But Canada, diplomats said, may balk at the black-box provision because it wants to exercise a right under the NPT to develop its own nuclear fuel technology and possibly sell it to countries who fulfil the other anti-proliferation criteria.
Brazil, Argentina, South Africa and South Korea could have concerns similar to Canada, some diplomats said. Brazil and Argentina, who have formed a commission with the blessing of the IAEA to develop nuclear power jointly, may also object to the clause on intrusive UN inspections since neither allow them, according to diplomats.
Most countries now using atomic fuel buy it rather than make their own. Just six - the United States, Russia, France, Britain, Germany and the Netherlands, the first four of which have nuclear weapons - enrich uranium and sell it abroad.
Nations seeking enrichment capacity see sales curbs as a possible manoeuvre to dominate profitable markets, or want to be immune to cut-offs in supply amid international tensions fanned by Iran's nuclear activity, which has drawn UN sanctions.
"There are very understandable political and commercial issues in the picture here," said a European diplomat. Daryl Kimball, head of the Arms Control Association think tank in Washington, said the US proposal would effectively bar enrichment-related sales to India, with which the United States struck a controversial nuclear co-operation deal in 2005.
India never joined the NPT and launched its nuclear arsenal with tests in the 1970s, spurring the creation of the NSG. The US-India accord remains in limbo because of leftist opposition in India. Among requirements for it to take force is an NSG waiver. Some NSG members may want to attach conditions likely to be unpalatable to New Delhi, diplomats say.
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